


guilty filthy soul

by trustmeimthe



Category: Saga (Comics), ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 | JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken | JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Saga Spoilers, Spoilers, vento aureo spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 15:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5789908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trustmeimthe/pseuds/trustmeimthe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>after izabel becomes friends with a mafia don and his survivor's guilt, sleepovers get way complicated.</p>
            </blockquote>





	guilty filthy soul

**Author's Note:**

> this is a commission for otis! some background information is probably necessary, so – the setting here is ruby city rp, with all credit going to its creators. further information can be found at the end!

"Izabel," he says, thoughtful and solemn, "I think we may be haunted."

Wait, no. That's not what happened first. Back up.

♛

"Izabel," he says, slightly alarmed, "did you put a horse in my room? You're going to have to clean up after it if you want to keep it."

No, that isn't right either.

♛

"Izabel," he says, voice fuzzy from sleep, "why is my face bleeding?"

There. Much better.

♛

The fact of the matter is that they've fallen into a routine. This is not a bad thing, not in the least. Giorno is a domestic creature at heart; it's a talent that's lain dormant for a decade and a half, and now that he has the opportunity to keep house, he's very happy to, as long as there's the occasional knife fight to spice things up. For her part, Izabel is pretty sure he thinks she needs a break from all that war business, and he might be wrong or he might be right, but either way, it's pretty cute that he worries about her.

So this is what happens. Every day at sunset, Izabel wakes up, pulls herself out of the watch, and launches herself at Giorno at top speed. From that point onward, the volume in their wing of the mansion increases by several decibels. They start chattering immediately. They chatter at dinner. They chatter all through dessert. They chatter while Giorno walks around the garden, checking up on all the flowers, despite the fact that they're always pristine and perfect. They chatter so much that sometimes, in their chattering, they have to stop halfway down the hall to gesture wildly and expressively at each other. Sometimes this creates a roadblock, but neither of them care.

They're best friends.

The routine culminates as follows: Giorno stays up until two in the morning most nights, which means that Izabel supervises his extensive nighttime routine, which she refers to as the Sacred and Profane Lowering of the Donuts, and about which he has sworn her to secrecy, very dramatically and publicly. (It's not actually all that exciting, and he doesn't care if she shares it. It's just fun to have secrets.) She decides what kind of ridiculous nighttime apparel he's going to don this evening in particular, and then they lounge on the bed together, or in Izabel's case just above the bed, their chins resting in their respective hands as Giorno reads and Izabel looks over his shoulder and urges him to turn the stupid page faster, ugh.

They gossip, but more quietly. Presumably everyone's ears burn. She makes him laugh, which is important, she thinks, because during the day he doesn't laugh nearly enough. Around one thirty, Gold Experience does her hair for the rest of the night, as per her specifications. And at two, on the nose, Giorno drifts off to sleep with a soft smile thrown her way that beams directly into her heart.

He's so stupid, but she loves him a lot.

Tonight is different, though. Tonight he goes to sleep early, which sort of stinks, but she gets it. This place has been crazy lately, people leaving and dying and dying after leaving, mysteries on mysteries, resolutions and shouting matches and frustrations and too much of everything. He barely slept the night before at all, so it doesn't surprise her too much that he passes out early tonight. It does surprise her a little that he drools on his pillow when he's this exhausted, but she won't betray him by telling anyone. Probably.

The other thing that surprises her is that, on the stroke of midnight, he yelps in his sleep (he never makes a sound) and sits straight up in bed (he never, ever moves).

"Izabel, why is my face bleeding?"

She zooms over to him immediately, scoffing. "Don't be ridiculous, your face isn't - oh. Fuck."

Because yes, it absolutely is, in several places. His cheek is gouged in four long stripes, and blood is welling from every single one of them. It looks bizarre on Giorno, who's always so perfectly put-together, and she's struck with the almost-irrepressible urge to tell him to fix it right the fuck now, but that's really not the most pressing issue right now, is it?

"I don't know, I didn't see anybody in here." She frowns and waves her hand through the lamp, trying to slap the filaments into working. Giorno bats her hand away calmly and turns it on at the switch.

Why is he so chill after being attacked? Oh, yeah: because he's used to it.

It looks way worse in the light of the lamp. The edges of the scratches are not only ragged, but dirty, like whoever scratched him hadn't scrubbed under their nails in years. And it takes her a second to recognize that she thought _nails_ and not _claws_.

Well, it makes sense, doesn't it? Something with claws that got the jump on him like that, it would've just eviscerated him. So this is claws. Dumb, blunt, human claws. Or human- _ish_. Why didn't she see it?

Protectively, she puffs up into a monstrous shape, a mimic of the painting of Echidna she saw reprinted in a library book that Giorno brought back for her. There's all ghosts in there, so she won't go in, but she sure as shit wants to see what's in there. Especially if it's ugly and she can make people pee themselves with it.

"Calm down, Izabel." Giorno rolls back onto the bed again, props himself up on the pillows, and starts gingerly dabbing at the scratches on his cheek. His fingers fit against them, one two three four, and he frowns tightly.

"You're thinking it too, right?" she demands, shrinking back to her normal form and doing an agitated barrel roll in midair. "It's fingers. Finger _nails_. And don't tell me to calm down, I am the picture of exactly how calm someone should be when her brother gets _attacked in his sleep._ "

"That's definitely not the worst attack I've experienced. Whoever it was should have tried harder." His voice is wry, but not entirely joking. After a moment, the tips of his fingers glow gold, and he winces as the wounds begin to knit up.

"You're getting better at that," she muses, flipping over onto her stomach. "It looked really gross, Gio, like there was old blood and dirt in there, and - it was just gross."

"I was having the most awful dream . . ." He kicks the covers off instead of folding them down carefully, the only overt sign of his own agitation. "I don't remember all of it, but there was someone holding me down. I think I was dying. And she - it was a woman, I'm pretty sure it was a woman - she was holding me down by my shoulders. My head was underwater, but the rest of me wasn't - like she was trying to drown me in a bowl."

Izabel just stares at him for a minute. Then: "What the _fuck_ , Giorno?"

". . . What, what the fuck?"

More staring. She has to try to figure out if he's joking or not, but with a sinking feeling, she decides he probably isn't. It's not even anything to him. He's not scared, it's just a fact. Has he dreamed of dying before? Almost definitely. He saw his body die, after all, so this - maybe this really isn't anything.

Yeah, fuck that, this is a lot. He should be scared. This poor stupid kid and his fucked-up barometer for bad things. She slides down towards him, like she's on a slip-and-slide in midair, and eventually comes to rest at the edge of his mussed-up comforter.

"Well, it obviously wasn't a dream." She pronounces this flatly, like it's just fact, which to her it is, and to his credit, he doesn't even begin to argue with her, just nods. Her word's ghost gospel. "Do you remember anything about that woman? What she looked like? Was there anything else in the dream, or other people, or--?"

Giorno shakes his head, pulling a pillow into his lap and picking at the edges of it. "Just her. And some frogs. She was old, slim--"

"Giorno."

"-- _slim_ , with long hair, down to her waist long, and it was mostly gray with a little bit of--"

" _Giorno._ "

"--red in it, just little streaks. That's all I saw before she--"

" _GIORNOOOOOOO._ "

"--tried to drown me. What?"

Izabel wrings her hands in desperation. "Frogs?"

"Oh. Right. There were frogs. Three. One on each of her shoulders, and one on my chest. Is that important?"

"How the hell am I supposed to know if frogs are important, Giorno? You're the frog expert! Tell me if frogs are important!"

"Frogs are _vitally_ important," he says loftily, "to every ecosystem. Did you know that frogs are found on every continent except for Antarctica, and they make up 85% of amphibian species?"

"Sweetheart. I don't care."

He flops back onto the pillows and stares at the ceiling. "They were black. They were black frogs. I don't think that's normal."

Privately, Izabel says something snide about how he should know for sure whether _any_ species of frog _anywhere_ is black, but he looks legitimately worried, which bounces off her heart and rattles around her chest and makes her worried, too. So what the fuck now.

Hesitantly, like she's about to scare off a skittish deer, she comes and sits next to him on the pillow - well, "sits" in air-quotes, given the utter lack of butt. Less hesitantly, but still slowly, she leans over to pet the loose hair curling around his shoulders.

"We're gonna figure it out," she says, quiet and fierce, and she's never meant anything more. "Nobody fucks with you in this house but me. And maybe Narancia, you know. But he gets a pass because he's the baby."

"Don't you _ever_ let him hear you say that." Giorno's voice is a low murmur, but his lip turns up at the corners.

Yeah, okay, she nailed it on that one.

He turns on his side to look at her, and for a moment she's consumed, the way people sometimes are, by his full attention, the solemnity and gravity in his eyes and the love he pushes through the space between them and lays in her lap, an offering to his favorite sister, his _famiglia_. And then it's over, because he's sitting bolt upright and staring past her with far less alarm than puzzlement - god, does he ever get scared of _anything?_

"Izabel, did you put a horse in my room? You're going to have to clean up after it if you want to keep it."

She opens her mouth, baffled. Closes it, even baffled-er. Turns in midair to look at it and, yep, that sure is a horse. A tall and skinny black horse with an irritated expression, she thinks, probably, and she doesn't really know how she can tell it's pissed because horses don't emote the way people do, but it's definitely pissed.

She sticks her tongue out at it.

"That's not helpful, _commaruccia_ ," Giorno says placidly, and gets up to cross the room towards it.

"Giorno!" she yelps. "Don't _touch_ it. Its eyes are on fire, that's not normal. Giorno, did you hear me? Its _eyes_ are on _fire_. Gior _no_!"

He shushes her, which she considers rude, but she does shush, crossing her arms over her chest and bobbing up and down with agitation. Sure, he's good with animals, but that can't possibly extent to ghost horses with literal, actual fire for eyes. Those are kind of in a class of their own.

All the same, he gets within a foot of the thing and it doesn't bite him or anything, which has to be a positive sign. Hovering slightly closer, she watches him reach out his hand, palm-out. The horse doesn't come any closer, but it doesn't move away, either, just stays exactly where it is and sniffs disapprovingly.

"Should've worn less perfume today, _I guess_."

"Shut up, Izabel." And then, to the horse, much more pleasantly: "Did you try to drown me earlier? Did you scratch my face?"

The horse kicks a hole in the wall with a back foot. Giorno regards the crumbling plaster with a disappointed look.

"That really wasn't necessary. But I'll take that as a yes. You'll be some kind of death omen, I expect? This place really needs to calm down with the death omens . . ."

Something in the back of Izabel's head. Definitely not audible, but very clear all the same, the kind of thing that she knows the sound of just because she's heard it so many times.

_Lying._

"Gior _no_ ," she whines. "It's talking to me in my _head_. It did the Lying Cat thing."

"Really." There's half a second, maybe even less, of surprise, and then he gets that look, the one that she calls the Don Look, the one she tries to squash as often as possible and replace with the kind of look a sixteen-year-old should really be wearing. She's annoyed at herself with how relieved she is to see it now. She's not a leader - he is. She's not a problem-solver, but oh boy, can Don Giovanna ever solve a problem.

Levity later. Maybe after she punches this horse in the face. Time to focus on Giorno now, and later he can focus on her being cute and stupid, and things will return to normal.

He's looking at the horse thoughtfully now, like it's a puzzle he needs to solve. She can tell the horse doesn't like it, but she can also tell he's doing that on purpose, calculated provocation. Never has she ever met somebody ballsy enough to provoke a ghost on purpose, at least not since Klara, but, well, Giorno's . . . himself. If anybody can pull it off . . .

"So, if I was lying about the death omen - let's see." The corner of his mouth tugs up, half a smirk. That's calculated, too; he doesn't show anything unless he damn well means to or is perfectly safe, and the second thing is definitely not true at all. "If I was lying about that, then you're some other kind of omen, or you're here for revenge. Are you here for revenge?"

For a moment, nothing. Then:

_Lying._

"That was weird." Izabel exhales sharply, even though she doesn't have to. "Lying, but a pause first, so maybe you're close?"

The noise in his throat is an almost-animal hum, like he's thinking about something much less intellectual than this. Not for the first time, she wonders if intellectual thought comes as easily to him as physical movement does to other people. She wonders if he makes decisions automatically, his instinct and common sense blended together with natural brightness to make him some kind of human machine.

He's a lot nicer to her than every other machine she's ever met, that's for sure. And because he's being so brave, in his weird and impossible Giorno way, she ventures closer and clings to his sleeve, despite really not wanting to look at this stupid fucked-up horse anymore. This time, when she sticks her tongue out at it, it spits at her; this does nothing, of course, except for getting the carpet wet.

"Izabel, there's ghost horse spit on my carpet," Giorno chastises her, but he winds his fingers through hers all the same and squeezes tightly. She's not alone; of course she isn't. "If revenge is close, what's closer? Passing along a message to the living? Protecting someone? Possession - no, don't bother, that's not it? Judgment?"

_Lying. Lying. Lying._

. . . and then nothing.

Izabel slaps him on the arm.

"Ow!" he complains, and grabs that hand, too. "The last one?"

There's more _nothing_ , but louder. She winces. "It's yelling not-lying in my head, make it stop!"

Rolling his eyes, he pats the horse on the nose. By some magic, he doesn't get his entire hand bitten off.

"You're here to judge me?" He sounds majestically unimpressed, boredom oozing from every pore. "I have to tell you, you're not the first and you absolutely will not be the last. Give me an ultimatum or something, or I'm not interested."

"Yeah," Izabel taunts it, "he's not--"

And then a wash of images. Memories. She knows they're memories - at least most of them. And every one hurts.

They all run together, wash over one another, a bevy of corpses, some she's seen, most she hasn't – Barr, Heist, Abbacchio, Narancia, Bruno, people she loved or liked or at least didn't hate, people who were her family or could have been, people who died in horrible ways for good causes. There's things she sees that she's heard but never saw herself; the body that she knows really is Giorno's but looks just like Narancia on the flip side of every second, that's the one that she knows will be burned into her retinas, because looking at her _fratello_ and seeing a corpse and seeing Narancia and seeing and seeing and seeing, that's too much, that's too fucking much.

She doesn't scream, because she _won't_ scream, she refuses, but she does let out a little yelp of horror and slaps her hands over her mouth. She doesn't want that _thing_ to have the fucking satisfaction, but god. She doesn't want to look, either.

“Izabel.”

His voice is low, quiet. Unshaken. Which pisses her off, not that she's angry at him but maybe on his behalf – he _should_ be shaken. This is fucked up. She hates it and she hates this stupid horse and she wants it out, out, and she's on the verge of puffing herself up big and furious again but his fingers squeeze down on her arm.

"Izabel," he says, and maybe it's not thoughtful, maybe it's just tired. "I think we may be haunted."

Miserably, she deflates, too-small Izabel once again. “No shit,” she murmurs. “You gonna exorcise me along with it?”

“Don't be absurd. I just wish I knew what it was . . . “ He runs his thumb across his bottom lip, his eyes half-lidded and distant. “Judgment. She said judgment, didn't she? Judgment . . .”

Something flickers across his face then, some black and vicious humor, and she hates it because she can tell what it is, a knife turning inward.

“Giorno--”

“No, no. It's very good, actually.” He hooks his thumbs in his pockets, rocks back on his heels, regarding the horse – the mare – with a look that's almost impressed. “Everything else was justified. Those are the only things I feel any guilt about. Isn't that funny? Those things that I didn't do.”

“Fuck!” For a moment she wishes she was one of those ghosts that throw things off tables and break lamps and open cabinets, the pissy ghosts, a poltergeist on its worst day. If she could just vent her frustration somehow, anyhow, that would be one thing, but this-- “I am so fucking tired of talking about this, I could _gag_. Are you telling me all of the stupid bullshit we've been through already isn't enough? We're still _atoning_?”

He just shrugs one shoulder; all the same, it's very eloquent, this minor gesture, an essay in the twitch of a muscle. They'll never be done atoning, is what he tells her. The world will end and begin and end again before they stagger out from under the weight of guilt.

It makes her want to say his name again. But she doesn't. She knows it won't do any good. It's like she said – if all they've done so far isn't good enough, isn't hard enough work, then nothing will be, will it. Saying his name isn't enough. Loving him isn't enough. Being his family isn't enough. Being able to touch him, as wonderful as it is, that's not enough, either.

So what's the answer? Is there an answer?

There had fucking better be.

_Now_ thoughtful is what he looks. The mare's eyes are blue fire, and he's looking right into one of them, unblinking and unafraid. A few minutes ago, she was upset that he never seemed to feel fear of anything. Now she's grateful, pathetically so. She wishes she could be that strong, even though she knows it isn't strength, not really; it's just separation. Space as armor.

_Imagine yourself as distant from the pain._ Does that actually help? Or does it just make him feel more pathetic when he comes crashing back down to reality?

“Do you plan to drive me mad?” he says, smooth as silk, and for a moment she thinks she's talking to him, but no – it's the horse. He's talking to the horse. “Because if you are, you might be a little bit too late. -- Izabel?”

She jolts upright, beating down the urge to salute. It's something about the voice, she swears. “Yeah?” She clears her throat. “Yeah?”

“Can we use guilt?”

What the fuck. “What the fuck?”

He laughs. It's not one of his nice laughs, but it's not as far gone to shit as it could be, so she warily chalks it up as a tentative win. “I mean – you can use anger, can't you? Parts of it, pieces. You can channel it into something productive. What can you do with guilt? Think about it. Break it down, reprocess.”

Guilt? She stares at him.

_It's not a brick, it's not an ingredient, you can't break apart a feeling into it's component parts! It's splitting the fucking atom! There's no point in even trying! You really are crazy sometimes, you know that, don't you, Giorno? You reach and reach and reach and eventually there isn't going to be anything left! There isn't a solution to every problem. You can't always be the hero. You can't save everybody!_

You can't.

The only reason she doesn't say it out loud is because of that voice. Something about that voice. He says _think about it_ , and she has to, and she does, her brow furrowing in frustration and a pinch of anger but, below that, a vicious intention to get this right. He's asking something big of her, and even if she can't tell whether he's asking because he doesn't know or because he just wants her to figure it out on her own – even if she can't tell, she still has to get it right.

Unexpectedly, she finds her eyes stinging; she thinks of breath on her neck and squeezes her eyes tight shut, full of regret.

“You can . . .”

There's a long silence, or maybe just short that feels long, she doesn't quite know. When she manages to open her eyes again, Giorno is looking at her, his eyes soft and kind even as his mouth is a sharp tight line, his jaw so tight it's clicking.

“ _Puoi farlo,_ ” he says, delicate, and his voice is calm, and she realizes with bitter humor that she doesn't know whether the love he's pushing across the space between them takes the shape of a well-worn sweater or a noose. She could never, ever hate him, but some days it's easy to see how someone might. _You can do it_ , he says, and if she didn't believe in herself, it would be so easy to hate him for believing in her.

She struggles. But in the end, she licks her lips and then manages, “You can make sure the thing you're guilty about . . . doesn't happen again.”

The look she shoots him asks, _Is that right?_ The look he returns is, _Yes, yes; perfectly, first try._

It also says _I love you_ , which makes up for a lot, because this love is different, laced with relief instead of the frightening, icy determination; it makes him seem human, mortal, imperfect. Sometimes that's what he needs to be.

“If someone does not hide his guilt – or hers,” Giorno demurs quickly; “if someone is not afraid of her own pain and regrets, and actively works to correct them in the future, what place does judgment have in the equation? She has already judged herself wanting – or he himself – and therefore, the work you purport to do is . . . “ He sniffs. “Extraneous.”

He looks at the mare. The mare looks at him. Izabel looks between them both, unsure whether to laugh or whoop or freak out.

After a moment, he elaborates: “Leave, please.” The _please_ does not sound like a _please_. She loves when he does that.

The mare pops out of existence. Where she stood is a very small black frog, which shoots Giorno a baleful look before vanishing as well.

“I wonder where she went,” Giorno says absently, holding his arm out without looking.

Izabel floats into his embrace, of course, even as she privately wishes this was less of a side hug and more of a hug sandwich. As if he has, or they have, read his mind, Gold Experience manifests on her other side and leans up against her. She has the sneaking suspicion Stand and user are holding hands behind her back, but she's not about to say anything about it.

“Hey, Giorno?”

“Mm?” Yes, those are definitely two sets of interlaced fingers tapping in Morse code against her spine: .. / .-.. --- ...- . / -.-- --- ..- .-.-.-

She chews her lip. It's one of those questions she isn't sure she wants to know the answer to. “Do you believe what you said? About guilt.”

He gives her a mysterious smile. She fucking hates those smiles. “Would I lie?”

“For fuck's sakes, Giorno--”

His free hand comes up, a _stop, spare me_ gesture. “I don't know. Not really. But I think if I didn't believe it on some level, she wouldn't have gone. If she comes back tomorrow night . . . well, that will mean that I don't believe it as well as I should.”

This . . . her stomach twists a little at that. It's a big risk to take, and if this doesn't work, then what are they going to do? Fuck if she knows. Fuck if he knows, too, probably. But then again, what are the alternatives? Which is probably exactly what he thought, too.

Someday they'll be faced with something broken that doesn't have to be stuck back together with old gum and shoelaces, but it probably won't be for a _really_ long time.

“Hey.” She nudges him in the side with her elbow, then does the same on the other side with Gold Experience for good measure. One is noticeably more pliant than the other. “Giorno.”

“My Izabel.”

Pitching her voice at premium whine, she yowls, “Tell me a _story_.”

All the tension leaches out of his shoulders at once then, a soft huff of laughter escaping from his lips as he just manages to hide a grin. Untangling himself from her is a process he makes deliberately longer than it needs to be, because he loves her and he loves to give her a hard time, but it's telling the way Gold Experience wraps his arm tighter around her waist even once he's gone, backing towards the bed and falling onto it with a sigh.

“You haven't had enough of fairy tales?”

“Never,” she declares, leaning into the embrace, not comfortable or happy, but closer than she was before, and sometimes closer is the best you get. “Never ever.”

He curls up under the blankets, then, hair falling into his eyes, and she thinks with a twinge that she's never seen anyone who looks so beautiful or ridiculous or tired.

“Once, there was a young woman named Catherine. She was a rich merchant's beautiful daughter, and she had a destiny.”

Maybe tomorrow, she reflects, listening to this boy speak like a man, a leader, an orator, will be a day for stories, not for destiny.

**Author's Note:**

> the spirit in question here is a slightly modified version of the adh seid, an irish spirit who comes to those with a guilty conscience, haunting them with the intent of driving them insane. _commaruccia_ and _fratello_ are italian for ladybug and brother, respectively. the sentence in morse code says “i love you”. the story giorno is telling is “catherine and her destiny,” an italian fairy tale.
> 
> and last but not least, my commissions information can be found here!


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